***Will and Karlie***

Thanks to the wonderful and talented Ryan Towe of Ryan Towe Photography who once again has blown my mind with his beautiful work. Aren't these two kiddos just darling. :)

Click here to see a folder of some of my favorites.

what we have been up to...

We have been super busy around here! Traveling, enjoying the great outdoors in this beautiful fall weather, visiting my new nephew Hunter!, helping out at church, getting my store stocked for the holidays, and starting on Christmas gifts. I know, I thought it seemed super early to start thinking about Christmas gifts until I realized...Ahhh!...it's almost the middle of November already! I have a lot to do! As many of you know I am making this year a Handmade Christmas. Every gift that I give will be handmade with love. Most of them I am making myself, and others are handmade by others. I have been having so much fun starting to search and create everyones gift, and I am starting to feel like I have a lot to do in the next month in a half on top of putting enough stuff up in my shop for those other handmade holiday shoppers. :) so yes...I have been keeping myself busy.

Some really exciting news is that I was featured in the Nov./Dec. issue of QC Magazine! They did an article featuring local artists and crafters for handmade holiday gift ideas. You can check it out here.

...and I seemed too busy to share with you some of Will's ONE YEAR PICTURES!... by the amazing Ryan Towe Photography. We were amazed with how these turned out and are having a hard time deciding which ones to get! Any suggestions? Ryan posted a few on his blog. You can see those here and here.

And of course, I recently told you all about my new nephew Hunter who was born on Oct. 8th and I have not even put up a picture yet! What kind of aunt am I? So here is a few from our visit in Cedar Falls on Monday. Isn't he the cutest little thing. He is such a content little guy; for he has a mom and dad who are really good with him.

Here is the handsome fella! :)

...and the proud new mama!

Me and Hunter...oh he was sooo cuddly!

It was hard to get one of the two cousins because Will would not sit still!...but I think they liked each other. :)

Will has been obsessed with giving hugs this week.

Kristin, Will, Hunter and a proud Grammers.

Photoshop fun!

The other day I discovered that you don't need photoshop on your home computer to do this, you can just go to photoshop.com and use these basic shop tools to create fun pictures like this, and its free!

original

pop color

sketch

New Camera!

Yea! I finally got my new camera! I am super excited to play around with it and see what all it can do. It is quite the change going from a 35mm SLR to a digital SLR. I don't know how to use all these buttons!! It might take me awhile to get going with this because I am horrible with reading directions and applying it. I am more of a visual learner. :) It is an 8 MP Canon Rebel XT; if anyone has any pointers let me know. Once I get it up and running I will hopefully be able to show off some of my photos for you.

Praise His name with DANCING!

"Praise His name with dancing"....{Psalm 149:3}

Lois Greenfield is my favorite photographer. She does such a great job at allowing movement with in the images to flow. Every photograph of hers that I look at has so much energy. I use dancing as a form of worship; as I look at a lot of Lois' work I can really see God's beauty through them. The way these dancers can move their body together as one is true awknowledgement of God's beauty. At the beginning of her photography career she became very interested in taking pictures of dancers. She would set up a studio and just let them dance freely for hours capturing the best. I love it! Here are some of my favorite Lois Greenfield pics........

Breaking Bounds "This moment could never be repeated, not even by Danny and Ashley themselves. Like many of my pictures, this is a uniquely photographic event. It only exists for a 500th of a second." -Lois

"I love impossible looking situations that allude to the moments before and after the shutter’s click. I want the viewer to wonder, “Where is he coming from? How will he land?” - Lois

You can check out more of her great work here.